Conventional techniques for generating customized printed products such as business cards, stationery, and other personalized and marketing communication materials frequently employ computers in the production process. In FIG. 1, for example, a customer 103 desiring to have business cards printed for a new employee typically brings or faxes information 104 to a print broker 101, such as a local print shop or copy store. An employee 106 creates an order for the print product using an ordering computer 105. The print order may specify the number of cards to be produced, the font styles to be used, and customized content such as the employee's name, title, and telephone number.
The print order created in ordering computer 105 can be transmitted to a second facility 102 for preprocessing. The order can be transmitted as an ASCII file over a communication link 107 to a second computer 108 at the second facility. A layout computer 108, operated by another employee 109, is used to lay-out the content within the space and style constraints of the printed medium (e.g., business cards of a certain size). Conventional software packages such as Pagemaker™ and Quark™ can be used to format the printed product and simulate its appearance before it is actually printed.
The output of the layout computer, which may comprise for example a PostScript™ file, is sent to an image setter 110, which is a device that generates a plate or other medium that can be directly used by a printing press 111 to produce the printed product 112. Depending on the type of print medium, the printed product may comprise customized paper products, embossed materials, rubber stamps, plaques, or the like. Although the conventional arrangement shown in FIG. 1 is exemplary, the system may be housed in a single facility, such that all of the printing tasks occur at a common location.
Large corporations by their nature require large quantities of customized printed products, such as business cards, sales brochures, and letterhead. Each time a new employee joins a corporation or a new brochure is needed, the steps shown in FIG. 1 must be carried out. Repeating these steps incurs extensive costs due to human involvement (e.g., labor costs) and the possibility that errors may be introduced into one or more steps. Because of the many steps and human involvement, a simple printing job can take days or even weeks.
As one example, an employee's name must be typed or printed on an order form, then transferred into an ordering computer, and manually entered again into a layout computer. Every time a human touches the information, the process is delayed and the possibility exists that an error will be introduced. Additionally, various validation and approval procedures must be followed in order to ensure that the printed information will be produced correctly, and that only certain authorized products are printed.
Attempts to further automate the foregoing processes are complicated by the fact that different print brokers may use different formats, techniques, and software products for entering data and generating printed products, and the fact that different companies store content such as employee names and addresses in different ways. Other automation barriers are inherent in the distributed and non-uniform process steps that are carried out by different print vendors and suppliers. Some of these problems are discussed in more detail in co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 09/460,307, filed on Dec. 13, 1999, and incorporated by reference herein.
One approach for solving some of the foregoing problems is to use a centralized print production system that accepts print orders over the Internet and allows the customer to approve print proofs on-screen. As described in the above-referenced patent application, the printing process can be simplified by using certain file formats and data processing techniques to generate printed products. Nevertheless, further automation is possible.
Enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) are conventionally used to store, track and plan information concerning an enterprise, such as a company. For example, many companies use human resource management systems that store information such as employee names, addresses, titles, salaries, and the like. An example of one such system is a commercially available product from PeopleSoft.™ Such systems typically perform payroll and accounting functions, and other human resource related functions such as organizational management. Other enterprise resource planning systems perform tasks such as tracking and planning sales, manufacturing operations, and the like. Companies that do not use ERPs may nevertheless store company-wide information in databases that allow the data to be accessed in a structured way.
The aforementioned ERPs and databases have not typically been coupled to an automated printing facility of the type described above. Even though ERPs and related databases store extensive company-wide information such as employee data, organizational information, inventory and manufacturing data, and the like, such ERPs and databases have not been linked to an automated print production process that could make direct use of the data stored therein. Instead, humans still manually generate print production requests on the basis of changes to the company's data. Because corporate databases and ERPs have historically not been directly accessible to outside vendors, it has not been feasible to directly translate data stored in such databases into print production requests.
When a new employee is added to a company's database, a human resources manager must recognize that event, and must manually create a print order for new business cards, name plaques, and letterhead. This manual intervention provides opportunities for errors to creep into the print production process, and introduces delays. (For example, if the human resources manager is out sick, busy, or on vacation, the order for business cards may be delayed). Moreover, the labor involved in generating such print orders is costly, particularly where a company adds dozens of new employees on a weekly or monthly basis.
As another example, suppose that a corporation decides to create award plaques, coffee mugs, and specially embossed pins for all sales employees who have exceeded a sales quota. The job of creating print orders to generate such printed products would typically fall to a human resources manager or similar employee, who would query the company's database to identify such sales employees, generate a printout of employee information (e.g., name, title, and the like), and manually create print orders for the various printed products. That task is labor intensive and, as noted above, could result in misspelled names or other data errors.
As yet another example, suppose that a bicycle manufacturing company receives an order to manufacture 5,000 new bicycles of a particular model and style. A manager at the manufacturing company must determine when the bicycle order will be completed and, based on the schedule, create a print order to have printed instruction manuals, warranty cards, and the like generated in time to be included with the manufactured bicycles and shipping boxes.